April 2015

During the final moments of this past Monday’s Planning Board meeting, City Planner Andrew Thomas announced a plan that would cap the number of homes that can be built on 37 acres of the North Housing parcel – Navy land that sits just north of the housing now occupied by members of the Coast Guard.

Alameda's City Council narrowly okayed a plan to extend public safety contracts by four years, including a new trust fund for retiree health costs that both the city and workers will pay into. Here's the tweet by tweet.

I recently went to a doctor to have her look at the results of a bone density test I had three months ago. When I went to my primary doctor for my annual exam, he noted that I had lost another inch of height. The prior year I had also lost an inch.

After growing up on Bay Farm Island through the “Happy Days” era, and with high school behind me, I prepared for my future: Two years in a brass foundry, one year in a gas station, two hours at American Can Company, and six years operating Caterpillar tractors accompanied by a stint in the National Guard. Finally, I arrived at what I was born to do, stepping into my great-grandfather’s, grandfather’s and father’s footsteps, along with my brother: following 100 years of fire service history.

I witnessed an accident on Santa Clara Avenue, and the image has haunted me for two weeks. On my way home from the dentist's office on Santa Clara, I stopped to honor the crossing guard's signal to allow a woman to cross the broad avenue - or attempt to cross it, anyway.

A.A. Cohen was a transportation man. He built the San Francisco & Alameda Railroad (SF&A) in 1864. By 1868, Cohen had also acquired interest in the Oakland Railroad and Ferry Company. He sold both. The sale made Cohen a wealthy man who could afford the best. In 1872, He and his wife, Emilie, hired the architectural firm of Wright and Sanders to help them express their affluence.

We represent some of the larger employers currently operating in Alameda. One of the many attributes that attracted us to locate on the Island is the promise of desirable housing and recreation for our employees – an attractive environment for jobs. We call upon Alameda’s mayor and City Council to fulfill this promise.

Many individuals and groups have recently expressed their opinions regarding the proposed extension to the city's public safety contracts. Information has been shared in bits and pieces, which can make it hard to understand how these proposed contracts contribute to long-term financial health of the city.

Council members said goodbye to two top officials, got a detailed update on plans for Alameda Point's Site A - and wrapped up before midnight with a few items left on the table. Here's what happened, in tweets.

“The comedy of #Alameda elected officials downplaying great economic news because it undercuts austerity plans is very evident (at the April 16 special City Council meeting on the budget). - Steve Tavares, Twitter

Spring is here, and even with the drought, flowers are blooming, and trees are putting on their frills. Over at Megan Small Photography, Megan Small is getting ready to celebrate her first year of business in Alameda (her sixth year overall) – and keeping busy with the demand that spring and the quickly approaching Mother’s and Father’s Day holidays create.

The City Council will consider amended five-year contracts for public safety workers on April 29 which would go into effect in November if approved.

The contracts establish a trust fund for retiree health benefits. The city would pay $7.5 million into the trust fund over 10 years; workers would pay between 2 percent and 4 percent of the top step of pay for their position into the fund over the next decade.

The contracts also offer wage increases that would raise pay at least 9.3 percent and change pension payouts to reflect a safety retiree’s top salary, and not their top three years of pay.

City officials are recommending the City Council approve a permanent civilian staffer to create and execute plans to help Alameda bounce back quickly from a range of disasters – the third position the city is creating to better prepare it for disasters.

East Bay water officials are imposing mandatory restrictions on water use to conserve water in the face of an extreme drought.

Officials with the East Bay Municipal Utility District are requiring customers to cut their water use by 20 percent compared with their 2013 use, in order to comply with new state regulations requiring the district to cut water use by that amount and to deal with shrinking water reserves and uncertainty about where additional water might come from or when the drought may end.

The city has prepared an $80.5 million general fund budget for the 2015-16 fiscal year that contains no cuts, a projected $1.4 million surplus and a fund balance of more than $30 million. But salaries and benefits are expected to push the city’s spending to increase to $83.1 million in 2016-17, which could mean some depletion of the balance or cuts are in the offing.

This past weekend, my sweetie and I drove up to Chico. The trip entailed three hours of driving through mostly rural scenery. The Sacramento River Valley is flat and broad and hot and the road is lined with grove after grove of nut trees.

Spring has sprung on the Island, making this great time to get out and ride a bike or take a leisurely stroll down our lovely tree-lined streets and picturesque avenues. It’s no secret Alameda offers an incredible variety of architecture and beachfront vistas to enjoy, but next time you’re out and about, slow down a bit and take a closer look at the amazing art that is all around us.

A new record has been achieved for Alameda Education Foundation’s Adopt A Classroom program this year. In March, we made our 189th presentation for the 2014-15 school year. To put it in perspective, six years ago we did 39 adoptions, and we have now topped that by 160; $94,500 has been donated to classrooms thanks to generous members of our community.

Authors of a new analysis claim that slow housing growth is a cause of rising rents, saying the nation’s least affordable housing markets are the ones where new housing permits are not keeping up with population growth.

After decades of public debate on the future of Alameda Point and a laudable community planning process, Alameda is finally in the late stages of negotiating the specifics of the first portion of the community plan for Site A on the old Naval Air Station.

On Tuesday night, city leaders announced tentative deals with Alameda's public safety unions that include formation of a new trust fund to cover retiree medical costs. That and more, in our tweet by tweet of Tuesday's seven-hour City Council meeting.

Paramedics with the Alameda Fire Department will soon be able to do more than ferry patients to the hospital and provide care on the trip there: They’ll also provide assistance to chronically ill patients after their hospital stay is over to make sure they are getting the care they need to avoid a return trip.

I just gave one of our cats her morning shot of insulin. Tiny syringe; tiny, tiny needle; and a small dose of insulin, delivered twice a day, approximately 12 hours apart. In her case, once at 10 a.m. and again at 10 p.m. Not an unbearable task.

On Facebook the other day, I saw a picture of my former sister-in-law that was taken recently. She is two years younger than me. She has always been beautiful and takes care of herself. I have not seen her in years.

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